Day of the Doc (or just shoot me now)

I called in sick yesterday to go see my regular Dr. because my lower back has been bothering me (again). I have some very common degeneration of the lower vertebrae....which most people over 40 have to some extent. It flares up every now and then, but generally a few days of rest and a course of prescription anti-inflammatory meds will beat it back into submission. I've gotten used to the drill....at least twice a year or so. Whatever. I can deal with it.

So, I got there at 8am and sat in the waiting room for 2 hours. Ugh. Then I sat back in the exam room for another looonnnggg time. I didn't check the time because it was making me too antsy. My doc comes in, and somehow over the course of asking me questions like "does it hurt more to sit or to stand, yadda yadda...." I made mention of the fact that I was having some problem with my ankle too. Actually I have been having a problem for months. I have sharp pain in the bottom of my heel all around the back of my ankle and part way up my calf. It comes and it goes. Ibuprofen seemed to take care of it and although my family has heard me complain (a LOT), I didn't think it was anything much. My back hurt far worse than my ankle, so I almost didn't even mention it.

The doc fixated on my ankle. She keep palpatating it, and making a concerned face and finally decided that she felt a cyst of some kind. She told me to wait a minute because she wanted to get me an appointment with a podiatrist "Today!". And she did.
So I left with my usual prescripts for my back and feeling a little scared. I overheard the phone conversation and I heard my doc say, "No I want her seen TODAY".

Anyway, I had a late afternoon appointment with the podiatrist. I was nervous and had no idea what to expect. After the way my doc sounded I was worried about amputation or something. Not really but I was uneasy. They took a million xrays of both of my feet. The appointment took forever, which made me unusually antsy because Erica was driving home. She came home to an empty house (inexcusable) because Bruce went with me. Mainly because my doctor said that they might do some kind of needle/draining thing if it was just a normal cyst. I didn't like the sound of that. But anyway....it took an eternity. I have some pretty bad inflammation of the achilles tendon in my right ankle causing a big mass of swelling, (but no cyst...yay). Apparently you need to address this quickly because it can cause a rupture. That tendon takes the most abuse of all the ones in your body. Its important if you want to walk. I wasn't doing myself any favors by letting it go on for so long. I also have the same thing in my left ankle only not as severe yet. Also? I have arthritis in the big toe on my right foot. LOL.....didn't need or want to know that.

They put me on the most dreaded of all medications: steriods. Hate them passionately! I get jittery, can't sleep and can NOT stop eating for the entire course of the meds. But its necessary. They also put me into this temporary cast/boot-like thing for ten days. It is both HUGE and UGLY. It looks like a ski boot, sort of. It velcros up and then you have a valve that you pump the insides up to conform tightly to your foot and ankle. I hate it. I also have a lighter one that is no-less obtrusive and ugly that I have to sleep in. What the heck? I just wanted a break from this back pain!!!

Anyway, Erica made it home safely. She and Bruce have mocked my ugly boot plenty.
And if anything good comes from this I have to take 10 days off of work....so....between that, the muscle relaxants AND the steriods, I should be healed and pain-free before I go back to work. And that will be a very good thing.

It's a bust

Well, its back to square one as far as the kitchen floor goes. The installation guy came out today to measure and determined that we have too many spots that are not quite level enough to make the pergo laminate feasible. It is too rigid, and would likely snap at the high spots eventually. Oh he will install it if I really want it but he won't guarantee it. So that pretty much makes it out of the question. It also takes hardwood, and tile out of the equation too. Apparently its not all that uncommon of a problem especially in older homes.

We could attempt to level the floor, but that is going to be expensive, under the house, mess around with the foundation kinds of stuff. Not worth it to me. So....that leaves basically one option: vinyl. At least there are a lot more options in vinyl nowadays. We saw some vinyl planking that looks amazingly like real wood. It has gotten good reviews online too. I checked. And there are lots of vinyl tile patterns.
So, we will see. We headed out to Lowes and Home Depot as soon as we got the bad news and we saw some things that we could live with. Nothing grabbed us quite like the Newland Oak pattern in Pergo though. Oh well. Its a set-back but its not the end of the world. We just need to make a decision soon. We have no furniture in our kitchen since it was in our way for painting and we were planning to have the floor installed within a week. It is all piled up in Stephen's room right now.

We hope to have some time to go look around at some of the flooring specialty shops to make sure we get a look at all the choices before we commit to anything.

Give and Take (mostly take) :)

We had to go shopping this afternoon. We have decided to go (almost) all out and redo light fixtures and the faucet and stuff while we are doing the kitchen. I say "almost" because the one thing we aren't doing is the countertops. We may eventually, but for now the old ones will just have to suffice. We have been looking at light fixtures, and ceiling fans for a while now without finding anything we really liked. We went to a specialty lighting store today and then to Home Depot and to Lowe's. It made for a really long day. But we were successful. We were in Home Depot, finding some things that we liked. We had them all piled up in the cart (ceiling fan, and 2 new light fixtures) when Bruce stopped to look at the under-counter lighting. My old fluorescents have seen better days. When we turned around to shop some more, our cart was gone. We walked around peeking down a couple of aisles, and we found an employee restocking our stuff. LOL. Bruce was like "Noooooo.....we want to buy that stuff!" The guy was nice and we all had a good laugh about it. One of the fixtures had been up really high and we had to wait on a guy with a ladder to retrieve it for us. We didn't want to have to wait on that again.

But later, after more shopping at lowe's where Bruce found the right length of LED under the counter lights finally, we were so tired and so hungry that we just went across the parking lot to Pizza Inn. We haven't eaten at a Pizza Inn since the kids were little. But we remembered they had a decent buffet....and it was pretty good.
Not great, or excellent but we were so hungry that it was satisfying. Bruce had eaten half his salad, set it aside to have a slice of pizza, and when he set it back on his empty plate to finish it, the waitress just breezed by and whisked it and the empty pizza plate away right under his nose. HAHA. We had a good laugh about that. Apparently its just the day for people to take our stuff away. No harm done, there was more salad at the salad bar. It was just so funny to see him poised to eat it and then it was just gone.

So about all the home improvement stuff....we remodeled this house back in 1994. Everything in it was new. But now, its all aging and needing to be replaced at the same time, it seems like. Appliances are dying right and left. The fixtures are all so outdated. Bright shiny brass was the choice of metal finishes back in the early 90's. Now, not so much. In fact, given the fact that our shower doors are trimmed in yellow brass, and our bathroom faucets....we were thinking we would need to go with that again. The lighting bars above the mirrors are in crappy shape. But right now you can hardly find brass even if you wanted it. Which I don't. Not really. But since we are doing this updating a little at a time, it is going to mean a hodge-podge of finishes for a while. Brass shower trim with brushed nickel faucets and stuff like that. We are going with chrome finishes in the kitchen this time around. The only thing that bothers me, even more than mismatched metals, is how no matter what I pick, it will be out of date long before the things wear out. Oh well.

Speaking of faucets, we didn't buy it yet because we were overwhelmed by all the choices to be made today, but I am in love with the Delta faucets that have the pull down nozzle with the high-powered magnet. Bruce was kind of digging the one that you can turn off and on with just a touch anywhere on the spout, but those were really pricey. It just looks like something made to break to me. We looked at Moen's and Kohlers and a million other brands, but Delta is the only one with magna-tite to hold it in place. I think I am going to have to go with a Delta.

Monday's Child is full of woe

Monday again. And I swear there are more Mondays than any other day of the week. How does that happen? We spent our whole weekend painting the kitchen. Its not done yet. The walls and ceiling are done, but we still have all of the trim to paint. Time just ran out on us. Hopefully we can get that finished up this week and then get the floor in. We are still waiting on the call for the installation. Should be soon though.

Tomorrow we are supposed to have sunshine. I am not sure I will recognize it when I see it. Torrential rain last week gave way to drizzly gray days even through today.
Luckily we haven't been affected by the flooding here. Bertie County has been hit pretty hard though. I feel for them. But I am also absolutely thrilled that we managed to escape going through that again in this town.

So, its October and I should have already dragged out my ton of Halloween decorations, but I don't think I will. It makes me a little sad not to decorate but things are too busy and we aren't going to be home. I don't know...maybe I will drag out a little bit of stuff. It wouldn't seem right not to. Am I really getting too old and tired to enjoy playing with all of my holiday toys? Say it isn't so....

Anyway, nothing much is going on. Well, lots is going on but not much of it is blog-worthy. I can only say so much about painting my kitchen....LOL. Its just not that exciting. I'm tired, maybe even heading to bed early tonight. Right now I have a snuggly little kitty beside me so I don't want to get up and disturb her. She is sleeping so soundly. Wish I was too.